1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a recording and/or reproducing apparatus for recording and/or reproducing information on recording tracks which are formed longitudinally in parallel to a longitudinal direction of the tape. More particularly, the invention relates to a technique for preventing the longitudinally formed recording tracks from overlapping with the adjacent tracks upon changing the running direction of the tape in the recording and/or reproducing apparatus.
2. Description of the Background Art
In a conventional rotary scanning type recording and/or reproducing apparatus having a rotary head drum, such as a video tape recorder (VTR), or digital audio tape (DAT) player, a helical recording system has been employed. In this helical recording system, a magnetic tape is wrapped around the rotary head drums in a helical fashion for recording and/or reproducing information on skewed recording tracks formed on a magnetic tape. Such helical scanning type recording system has been known to allow high density recording.
In such helical scanning type recording and reproducing apparatus, the skewed recording track tends to be formed in an overlapping fashion with the adjacent track due to a difference of relative speed between the magnetic tape and the rotary head drum upon deceleration of the magnetic tape speed.
On the other hand, the other type of rotary scanning system has been proposed to form the recording tracks in parallel to the longitudinal direction of the magnetic tape for recording and/or reproducing information on the recording tracks by means of the rotary head drum. This parallel scanning type recording system has been proposed in the U.S. Pat. No. 4,040,109, issued on Aug. 2, 1977, to Igor Alexervich Kryltosov. Such recording systems are known as a "parallel scanning type recording system" or a "longitudinal recording system". This parallel scanning type recording system is advantageous since it allows bidirectional recording and reproduction for recording and reproducing information in both forward and reverse directions of the tape run. Even for such parallel scanning type recording systems, the same problem tends to occur in a parallel scanning type recording and reproducing apparatus. In this parallel scanning type recording system, the recording tracks are formed in parallel to the longitudinal direction of the tape. Therefore, the positions of the recording tracks in the tape width direction will not changed even when the tape speed is decelerated. However, the distance between the ends of the longitudinally aligned tracks tends to be varied depending upon the relative speed between the rotary head drum rotation speed and the tape speed. Therefore, recording track overlapping between the longitudinally aligned tracks tends to occur due to a difference of the relative speed of the rotary head drum and the magnetic tape. On the other hand, deceleration of tape speed necessarily occurs upon reversing the tape drive direction or when stopping the tape drive. Overlapping of the longitudinally aligned tracks leads to discontinuous recorded information due to erasure of information on one of the overlapping tracks.